New paper: Anterior eye surface changes following miniscleral contact lens wear

The prescription of scleral contact lenses, as well as the number of practitioners who fit scleral contact lenses, has notably increased over the last few years. The purpose of this work was to quantify the effect of short-term miniscleral contact lens wear on the anterior eye surface of healthy eyes, including cornea, corneo-scleral junction and sclero-conjuctival area. Twelve healthy subjects wore a highly gas-permeable miniscleral contact lens of 16.5 mm diameter during a 5-hour period. Corneo-scleral height profilometry was captured before, immediately following lens removal and 3 h after lens removal. Results indicate that short-term miniscleral lens wear significantly modifies the anterior eye surface. Significant planar limbal radius increment and flattening in the sclero-conjuctival area were observed immediately following lens removal. In addition, sclero-conjuctival flattening was not uniformly distributed across the anterior eye, as the figure indicates. 

Consejo A, Behaegel J, Van Hoey M, Wolffsohn JS, Rozema JJ, Iskander DR. Anterior eye surface changes following miniscleral contact lens wear. 2018. Contact Lens and Anterior Eye (DOI: doi.org/10.1016/j.clae.2018.06.005)

 

Figure. Left: Sclero-conjuctival elevation within sectors for each session. Right: Difference respect to baseline in sclero-conjuctival elevation within sectors. Sessions: Before contact lens wear (MB), immediately after contact lens removal (M5) and 3 h after contact lens removal (M8). Error bars indicate +/- one standard deviation; N=12.